Family Tree
by scifiromance
Summary: Seven has to delve into even deeper realms of soul searching when a person even more unexpected than Axum confronts her in Unimatrix Zero...
1. Chapter 1

**A/n: I was flicking around Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki, a couple of weeks back and read that the writers had a few alternate plot ideas for the two-part episode 'Unimatrix Zero'. I feel inspired to pursue one of those ideas in fic form. The title comes from a song I think suits the story, 'Family Tree' by Matthew West. If songfics were still okay on the site this fic would definitely be one, I suggest listening to it while reading! Enjoy! **

Seven continued to run, despite the fact that she'd long since stopped hearing Axum's desperate, pleading cries echoing behind her. She could take the strain of sprinting for a while yet, although her body felt different here; weaker, fallible. Her eyes narrowed as her gaze zeroed in on a route though the improbably lush, wild landscape around her. Rational thought informed her that this…place must come to an end somewhere, that this dreamlike plane couldn't stretch reality to the extent of going on forever, but she'd been moving at her fastest stride for several minutes now and the same points of navigation stubbornly remained, laughing in the face of her frantic to-and-fro. Now, as the adrenaline of panicky confusion began to ebb, she began to suspect that her mind, in the unquantifiable state it had been put in by these 'people', individual drones, reaching out to her, was trapping her here, casting an invisible net over the forest that she couldn't escape through.

This conclusion jolted her to a halt as promptly as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over her and she had to grasp a particularly strong tree branch, knotted and gnarled with age, to stay upright. No, she couldn't be _imprisoned_ here, she was regenerating. Sooner or later the cycle would run its course and she'd wake up in Cargo Bay 2, just as she had for the past four years. She'd felt the tug of wakefulness, just as that snare set up against invading drones had accidently caught herself and Axum, but then they'd kissed, and Unimatrix Zero was back in the forefront of her mind, pushing against the pull of Voyager until the latter had let her go. The tingling feeling on her lips still lingered, as if Axum had left a physical imprint on her as well as on her memory. It had happened so quickly, she wasn't even sure which of them had initiated it. An impulse, an inexplicable impulse, brought on by undercurrents of emotions that had been gradually coming to overwhelm her instinctive distrust of the surreal nature of all this, smothering her fear at how little control she had over her place in this new world. It had been so natural, wrapping her arms around him to embrace his warmth, moulding her mouth to his eager, roaming, lips and tongue…

The reason for that, he'd breathlessly explained after she remembered herself and cut off her contact with this man who was still, fundamentally, a stranger to her, was because they'd been lovers for seven years. _Lovers_. The idea had always been rather abstract to her; she was, after all, a woman who'd assimilated more men than she'd ever known, whose humanity had been frozen at six years old only to be thawed out eighteen years later. At first glance it seemed impossible, but if she truly believed Axum and his co-inhabitants, then she'd been living an alternate life as a human for the entirety of those eighteen years, had been allowed to grow and mature normally with all that entailed. Could all that _really _be forgotten as soon as a drone was released from the necessity of regeneration?

Her legs weakened further as this question resounded mercilessly through her aching head and the branch could no longer support her weight. It splintered and she slid listlessly to the ground, her back skidding against the rough trunk painfully until she was sprawled out on her knees among the rebelling roots that had erupted from under the majestic tree. She lay there, panting, tears springing to her eyes as she watched her hand numbly. The implants whose presence seemed to be optional here had began to reappear in all their grotesque Borg perfection, but they faded in and out as if a holographic projector was failing, as undecided as she was about what was expected, about _who _she was here. Was she Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix One, the former Borg drone who was now a member of the U.S.S Voyager's crew or Annika Hansen of Unimatrix Zero, the young human who happened to have been assimilated but had remained an individual?

She closed her eyes for a long moment, feeling her chest move in an exhaling breath as she looked down at her two hands, now with matching pale pink skin and not a trace of metal in sight. The weight of her optical implant over her brow had lifted once more. Conflict ruled within her at the realisation, seeing the implants again had been reassuring in an odd way, gave her a sense of herself to grasp, no matter how painful, but she couldn't suppress the relief, the elation, she felt at the freedom from them, from her Voyager identity…

Her Voyager identity? What was she thinking? Her life on Voyager was the only one she had! A shiver ran over her as she looked around guiltily, although the air was comfortably temperate. In fact, not a single gasp of wind teased a path though this forest, not a drop of rain hung in the generic clouds above. The sky itself was a patchwork of different colours, ice blue, azure, blush pink, burnt orange; it was as if each inhabitant of this place had painted a hint of the sky of their various homeworlds into what hung above them here. Now that she took the time to truly take it in, the forest itself was a smorgasbord, as her native language would've phrased it. She recognised one flourishing flower as from Andoria, another from Ferenginar, a tree from a Ktaria next to one which grew only in the harsh environment of the deserts of Vulcan. Not even a botanist could cultivate such a harmonious environment, Unimatrix Zero was an impossible ideal, created from the collective memories of hundreds of thousands of drones at a loose end. An impossible dream, but one that she vaguely recalled living…

The crackle of disturbed undergrowth made her mind re-tune to fixate on her senses. She thought she heard a muffled curse as another step shuffled forward and her eyes focused in on a shadowed gap between two trees ahead of her. Anger suddenly sparked within her, then blazed through her veins. "Leave me alone!" she snapped at the veiled personage, all of her indignation and resentment at finding herself in this situation boiling over to fill those three words with an irate heat. These people may have brought her here, may well be in need of the help they begged for, but what right did they to spy on her, no matter how close-knit they all apparently were? They were familiar in a way that a recurring dream was familiar, not solidly known like the crewmates who inhabited her waking hours and had gained her loyalty. She couldn't handle the disapproving glances they exchanged every time she spoke with her Borg terms and inflections, the pitying, even tearful, looks they'd given her when she hadn't believed that her implants could be dispelled. Axum was worse, despite the new warmth he left her revelling in, if he couldn't contain the disappointed flinches that flashed across his face when she remained ignorant of something he felt she should know, or suppress his hurt at her confusion over their intimacy, then she didn't want to see him now, if ever again.

The footsteps had stilled, but suddenly she became aware of heavy, stricken breathing. The voice those breaths supported was eerily clear however, "Hello Annika."

Seven was surprised by the lump that rose in her throat at the sound of the deep, husky voice, her stomach twisting in warning as her hand gripped the improbably green grass below her. "That is not my name any longer…" The catch in the sigh echoing above her in reply, for some reason, made her look up at the man who'd found her. As her gaze locked with his blue eyes, she felt her own roll back for a moment, nausea swamping her as she felt her heart splutter in denial then stop. There was little point in questioning, she'd been this close to the ground when she'd last seen him. The lack of change in that time was disturbing. Perhaps she'd conjured this whole Unimatrix Zero scenario up, had truly lost her sanity. "Papa…"

The apparition of Magnus Hansen smiled at her sadly, crossing his arms wearily across his chest as he stared down at her, for a split second seeming to share her disbelief. "I'm really here Annika." He told her gently before his blue gaze hardened determinedly, "I'm here to tell you to leave this place."

**A/n: Yes, apparently the writers were originally going to have Seven meet her father in Unimatrix Zero but wrote Axum in as a love interest instead. Personally I would've liked to see that original plan on screen, but then I'm a die-hard C/7 shipper. PLEASE REVIEW! :D This should be a two-shot, but since I'm working on the next chapter of 'Their Human Errors' as well as this it might take a few days to finish. **


	2. Chapter 2

**A/n: When I wrote chapter 1 I said this would be updated within a few days…it's now four months later. I have no excuse, except for the total loss of my muse for this. Thankfully it came back with a vengeance while I was on holiday, so I hope you all enjoy this long-delayed chapter. **

Seven skidded backwards on the forest floor, her fingers now gouging painful scratches into the dirt and grass around her as she backed away blindly from the man standing quietly in front of her. When her spine cracked against the brute of a tree trunk she'd forgotten was behind her, she gained at least enough presence of mind to command her legs to stand, to _run_, but like a wild animal struggling under sedation, her legs weren't steady enough to really help, instead spasmodically lashing out at the threat with disorientated kicks. Even as flight or fight mechanisms ruled her body, a moment when her mind should've been sharpened by adrenaline, Seven still found her gaze locked dazedly on the eyes that were so like her own, that every memory and scrap of intellect she possessed was telling her _couldn't_ exist any longer. "No, no…this is impossible…" She muttered as her chest constricted, her breath catching until the release of unconsciousness didn't seem far away. "I am delusional…this proves it…"

"Annika…" The apparition of Magnus Hansen murmured softly, "You're _not _delusional. You don't even really believe that min flicka…you're just confused right now…"

Seven felt a whimper quiver within her throat as his voice took on the gentler, reassuring tones, even terms, which fitted into what she held onto from her childhood like fragments of a shredded photograph or a handful of notes in a half remembered song, but that instant of human weakness crystallised her inaction into resistance. "Isn't my confusion justified?" she choked out, the edges of her sharp words ragged.

Magnus gazed her at her compassionately, the seconds stretching out to fill the metre or so distance between them. "Yes, it is." He answered simply. His daughter could see the moisture glinting in his pale, faded eyes even as the shadows of the forest looming over them seemed to grow, their darkness intensifying. He made a decision when she remained frozen, closing the physical gap between them in a couple of loping strides. "Come on." He urged, the determined, certain cool his voice had held in those first minutes of introduction returning as he gently grasped her forearms and pulled her upright. She was too stunned to think of pulling back, merely leaning against the tree to remain standing as he bade her, unable to stop staring at him. Magnus took this chance to study the dear face made in the mould of his own and that of his beloved, letting go of one of her stiff arms to tentatively bring his fingers within millimetres of her cheek; he wasn't quite brave enough to risk breaking the spell of shock by actually touching her. "Herregud…" He mumbled in awe, "You've grown even more beautiful min älskling…"

Seven gave a start as if she'd jolted awake, and her gaze drifted past him down to herself for an instant. "But I don't really look this way!" she spat at him, wrenching her arm away from him violently. As if on cue, as she broke his hold, her arm seemed to blur and for a split second she saw her real arm again, the metal bulging out of the slightly mottled skin like grotesque veins.

Magnus blanched at the sound of her horrified gasp, but as he obediently stepped back from her he was still able to regard her levelly, unflinchingly. "The implants change nothing about what I said Annika, _nothing_." He shook his head slightly as he gestured down at himself, "Do you think I look exactly like I do now outside of this place?" His words, as Seven's had earlier pierced the world around them and in front of Seven's eyes, the aged, but still recognisable man morphed into a Borg drone. Seeing Seven's eyes widen in horror despite herself, the drone breathed a very human sigh and again took on the body mask of humanity. "See? It doesn't matter."

Seven's mouth had formed a thin, harsh line, her body stiffening into the same defensive wall her icy eyes represented. "How are you here Dr Hansen?" Her gaze narrowed further as he winced at the use of his title but said nothing, a sickening triumph burning through her veins. "_Why _are you here?" she demanded, all of Axum's explanations for Unimatrix Zero and its inhabitants existed flying out of her head when faced with the improbability of her father's presence out of the billions of possible drones in the Collective.

Magnus ran a stressed hand through his ash blonde hair, which was still youthfully disordered, flopping over his eyes, even though it was now mostly grey. "_All _of us are here because I, we…your mother and I, we created it." He heaved a weighty, broken sigh.

Seven had to suppress the hysterical, human urge to respond to that with a bitter, sarcastic laugh of disbelief. "You can't have…" She stumbled over her conflicting thoughts to say _something_. "Axum told me it's a flaw, a flaw in the assimilation process, which allows the affected drones to come here…"

"And who do you think introduced that flaw?" Magnus questioned, studying her sadly. "Our pursuit of the Borg wasn't just a vanity project Annika, an effort to prove our theories right and Starfleet wrong, we truly wanted to help the drones as much as we could. Do you remember how we used to bring individual drones abroad the Raven to study them?"

Seven wanted to refuse to remember, to reject that part of her childhood altogether, but she found that curiosity, and honesty wouldn't let her. "Yes." She hated how that one monosyllabic word came as a childish whisper from her lips.

"We had been researching everything that we could possibly understand about the Collective mind, it's strengths and weaknesses, and we especially thought about how it was maintained during regeneration…" He paused, as if the hopefulness that had lingered into those old words now pained him, "Eventually we deduced enough to realise that the oblivion of regeneration is when the Hive mind is at its most vulnerable to individuality, like sleeping humans in many ways, and we thought that if we altered the drones we took, gave them another circuit, an individual route that their minds could take in regeneration, they could be free of the Collective for hours at a time!"

"And because the nanoprobes of an individual drone create the blueprint for the nanoprobes of the person they are assimilating…" Seven continued, "…the 'flaw' you had created was passed onto new drones." She felt her heart ricochet painfully in her chest as she met his shimmering eyes, "The drones you had taken then assimilated us." She stated in a damning matter-of-fact tone.

"Yes." Magnus whispered, "That was the beginning of Unimatrix Zero."

Seven shivered, twisting her face away in rejection of his tortured voice. "Then where is Ma…" She hastily corrected herself, "…your wife?" Her head swivelled around suspiciously in search of watching eyes, green eyes; her mother's eyes were green. "Is she too ashamed of me to do anything but observe?" she snapped, barely aware of how shrill her own voice was becoming.

For the first time in the encounter, Magnus felt a flicker of real anger towards the daughter he'd failed so drastically, he was unable to shrug that accusation off. "Don't speak about your mother like that! Say whatever you want to me Annika, I deserve it, but don't disrespect you mother, she _loved _you more than…"

Seven blinked in shock as something about those words, or maybe a memory faintly screaming at the back of her mind, hit her like a sledgehammer. "Loved?" she echoed him faintly.

The flashing in her father's eyes was extinguished in a heartbeat, and everything about him began to collapse further inwards as he desperately dragged breath in to speak. The tears that Seven had seen forming in his eyes now hung from the lids, ready to fall. "I haven't heard your mother's voice in over twelve years, Annika."

No voice. Silence. To admit that he hadn't heard it was going into human euphemism, but it meant that same as that most Borg of terms, deactivation. Death. Suddenly, random, unravelled images of the same form which had been haunting her since she'd came here slammed into her. Screaming at her father in denial, running through this forest to escape, collapsing at the same tree, though already crying. These had been real, she'd lived them. Her head bowed away from her father's, if she moved she knew she'd be sick, that the tears building up behind her face would break free. "She…she was never here…" She choked out the words, forcing them over a ball of nausea almost blocking her throat.

"No." Magnus whispered mournfully, guiltily. "She never was." He took a deep, shuddering breath, knowing he owed his child, _their _child, more of an explanation. "When I arrived here, it was much smaller, less detailed, than it is now, each mind brings more detail, more life. I was alone, but I knew that if I had been assimilated by a drone with the 'gene' then…" He gulped hard, "I searched and searched, the others helped me, there were only a handful of them then, the original drones we'd altered, but once they understood who I was they helped me look. I found you, still in your nightgown, cowering under this tree, crying for me. I had my little girl…" His voice broke, and Seven was overwhelmed with the memory of that reunion. Papa bursting into tears at the sight of her, pulling her into arms and grasping her tight as she too wept in relief and pleaded for the return of her mother…

"_You_ assimilated me." She told him, but not nearly with as much venom as the bald statement may have deserved, it was instead shaky with grief and exhaustion. "But Mama was assimilated by a drone without your altered nanoprobes…"

Magnus' face crumpled as if she'd slapped him with the first comment, but it was the loss of his wife which made huge, irrepressible tears roll down his pallid cheeks. "I'm sorry Anni, I'm so sorry…I tried to protect you, I tried to bring Erin here to us, but…" He slammed his fist against the tree behind her with an agonised groan, "But I couldn't…"

Seven shuddered as he leaned over her, frightened by the wetness she could feel on her face as well as the 'new' memories washing over her continually, all related to him. "Why did you say you wanted me to leave Papa?"

Magnus straightened; surprised by the anguished hurt he could hear in her voice, he didn't deserve that from her. "You don't understand Annika, if I could choose…" He swallowed hard, "Unimatrix Zero gave me part of you for eighteen years, I saw you grow up here, you had a peaceful place to escape from the grip of the Collective…"

"I do not remember much detail about my time here…yet." Seven cut in, "Axum says I will soon…"

Her father's face hardened considerably at the mention of the younger man, his eyes darkening to a stormy shade of blue. "You'll leave before that time comes. Go back home to Voyager now."

Seven bristled, "What if I want to remember? Won't that make me more human?" she demanded, "The people here have requested mine and my crew's assistance! Haven't they told you that the Queen has discovered Unimatrix Zero and is already searching for a way to destroy it and deactivate the inhabitants?"

"That is precisely why I'm asking you to leave while you still can!" Magnus snapped irately, "You are already free from the Collective, fully human again and safe from the Queen on Voyager. Axum and the others should never have put you in danger by dragging you back here…"

"I am willing to take the risk if I can help to free these people! You're asking me to dismiss the fact that Unimatrix Zero could be destroyed, that _you _could die, just because you to alleviate your guilt by keeping me safe now, since you couldn't before!"

Magnus changed tact, "What will you do Annika, if Unimatrix Zero survives?" he asked quietly.

Seven gave a start. "I…do not know, I suppose I will be able to continue to come here when I regenerate…"

He regarded her sadly, "What good will that do? This isn't reality, if you live your life here, your real life on Voyager will be affected."

Seven inhaled sharply, "Of course I realise that Voyager is my real life, but…"

"You can only have one life min älskling; you'll get hurt if you compare this place, a dream, with the struggle of real life. Don't split yourself in two." He pleaded desperately.

"You're telling me to never come back here?" Seven threw back incredulously, "What about Axum and my friends?"

Magnus gritted his teeth, "What can Axum give you, really? His Cube is in the Beta Quadrant Annika. You'll love him but never see him outside of regeneration. You deserve someone to support you, someone who can physically be with you, marry you and give you children…"

Axum is in the Beta Quadrant? Seven felt herself pale at the thought, and anger surged through her at being confronted by things she'd never have either way. "What right do you have to tell me how to live my life? Your decisions stole it from me and now you're asking me to be selfish and disregard everyone here…" She began to explode at him, almost sobbing with feelings of betrayed rage.

"Annika!" Axum's voice rang anxiously through the forest, "Annika, where are you?"

**A/n: Please review. I hope this is believable, it was very challenging. Once again, I've written members of the Hansen family speaking Swedish. 'Herregud' means something along the lines of 'My God', 'min älskling' is 'my darling', 'min flicka' is 'my girl'. **


End file.
